Is this working ?

Last night, I held a three month old baby on my lap. It was better than chocolate.

I am not the sort of person that will say, oh, can I hold the baby ? For Babies can be so fey, and can simply scream their heads off if a stranger insists upon grasping them away from the tried and true.

I am the person that you want to visit your new baby or grandchild, for I find them all so terribly beautiful. The baby can’t help it if they look like Yoda, if they had a choice, I am sure that they would not want to have pointy, green ears.

This morning, when I did not have to run out of bed, I thought about many things, including why I find all babies so terribly beautiful and why I cry at all weddings. I think that it is because both are a new beginning, filled with such love and potential.

But our baby sitter of about 10 years said, hold the baby, as she went to get the coffee. Plop, I had a baby in my lap. And she was so pretty- and she did not scream and her fingers were so tiny, I truly had to resist the urge to pull off one of her socks, to see her tiny toes.

I know. But I kid you not.

Luscious is a baby.

Can anyone see this photo -

here

Has to do with the genealogy stuff, which is very neat right now, but some sortof distant cousin can´t seem to access my photos.

I would really appreciate any help about this…

I try recipes from the local newspaper, I confess. We live in a house which multiplies Jack Sprat and his wife by 2. 5 : The Father won’t eat cheese, The Boy won’t eat peas, The Baby loathes mushrooms , The Girl winches up her face in disgust at any meal that does not start from a 1 Euro sauce packet from Knorr and I have trouble with most ground meats, sausage or otherwise.

We eat a lot of chicken. Breasts, no bones, for The Father dislikes bones. Not that I am a bone cruncher…

So, today, we had experimental cooking once again. From the newspaper. Everyone liked it fine, excepting that it should have been served with french fries, not the boiled potatoes I dished up. Really, let’s clog those arteries good and well.

While I found it a bit drab, it is indeed the perfect Stoofvlees to scoop over frites , french fries. Just like the frites tent. And so I shall save it here, but make no pretensions of it being any more than a local dish, perhaps even an acquired taste.

STOOFVLEES MET APPLESTROOP

( Stewed – I think- meat with apple syrup)

Hoofdgerecht, 4 personen. De appelstroop en plakjes ontbijtkoek geven het stoofvlees een nostalgisch tintje.

( Main course, 4 people. The apple syrup and slices of gingerbread give this stewed meat a rather nostalgic flavor)

Vervang water eventueel door bouilon of fond ( uit een pot) of door een flesje bier and een flink scheut water.

( Replace the water with bouillon or fond – from a jar- or with a bottle of beer and a good bit of water )

Overigens, de appelstrrop kan ook vervangen worden door perenstroop.

( The apple syrup can also be replaced by pear syrup)

INGREDIENTEN

stuk winterwortel; dunne prei; boter om te bakken; 1kg runderlappen; 1-2 eetlepels mosterd; 2 dunne plakjes ontbijtkoek; 1 takje tijm; 1 laurierblaadje; flink lepel appelstroop.

( Ingredients- this is really a Grandma recipe, be forewarned.

-a chunk of a large carrot ( I used one about a foot long)
-a slender stalk of leek ( I used one about 2 inches thick)
-butter to braise and cook with
-2.2 pounds of your favorite stewing beef- I use something from the rump, called *Dikke Lende* here
- 1-2 tablespoons of mustard ( I used 1, a smooth Dijon)
-2 slices of gingerbread ( about 4 inches square, and an inch thick. If someone wants to actually measure ontbijtkoek, be my guest)
- a sprig of thyme
- one laurel leaf ( or is it a bay leaf ? You know, one the Victor wore about his head…)
-a large tablespoon of apple syrup. And it looks just like maple syrup, not apple butter at all. )

BEREIDING

-Maak het stuk wortel schoon en snij het in kleine blokjes.
(Scrape the chunk of carrot and dice it into small squares)

-Snij de prei in ringen.
( cut the leek in small rings)

-Verhit boter in een stoofpan en fruit hierin de blokjes wortels aan. Voeg de preiringen toe and fruit samen zacht.
( I have no idea what a * stoofpan * is: I use this big butt cast iron pot. Ok, it is not big butt, about 12 or 15 inches across …) In any case… heat the butter in a *stoofpan* and saute the diced carrot. Add the rings of leek and saute them together until soft.)

- Snijd het vless in blokjes.
( cut the meat into small chunks)

- Schep de gefruite stukjes groente uit de pan, voeg eventueel wat extra boter toe en bak het vlees rondom aan.
( remove the sauteed vegetables from the pot, add more butter if necessary and brown the meat. Ok, I am hearing Jo saying * brown is flavor* and 2.2 pounds of meat is one heck of a lot of meat. Yes, more butter.)

- Draai de warmtebron laag.

( Turn the heat down low- I moved the pot to our * slow burner*)

- Kruid met zout en pepper en voeg de gefruite groente toe.
( Season with salt and pepper and add the sauteed vegetables)

- Schenk zoveel water in de pan dat het vlees net onder staat.
( add water to the pan until the meat is just under…water)

-Bestrijk de plakken ontbijtkoek met mosterd en leg ze op het vlees.
( Smear the mustard on the gingerbread and place on top of the meat )

-Voef tijm and laurier toe en los de applestroop in het stoofvocht.
( Add thyme and bay leaf, stir the apple syrup into into the …the… watery part of the pot)

- Stoof het vlees in ca. 2.5 uur gaar.
( cook the meat slowly for about 2.5 hours, until tender. Well, it takes me much longer to get the meat tender, but, hey, I am just trying to translate…)

Like Tuna Casserole, one will never find this on any menu, anywhere. This is Dutch comfort food, best served over a plate of crispy fries with perhaps blanched green beans on the side to make one feel less guilty.

But I am saving it.

For we all have our Tuna Casserole recipes and Mac and Cheese recipes, hidden far, far away, don´t we …

How can it be avoided ? I shall not add to the chorus, for who cannot feel anything but utter pity ?

This weekend we had a rather unexpected house guest, one of our oldest friends. The children liked him fine, but felt a bit skewed in their routines. I ended up with The Boy and The Baby, zapping between an Elvis show from 1972 and the big American…. show to raise money for Haiti, in the kitchen.

I suppose that I was feeling very snarky, for I have decided that Elvis actually discovered *bling bling* jewelry and had bad hair. I really should not talk, for suddenly my hair is falling out, breaking off by the handful. And before The Baby came down, I was very snarky indeed with The Boy, commenting about the celebrities who shared my bad hair problems and saying, oh, look ! for 25 $ you can talk to … name your favorite famous person.

I also asked – but did not voice- what on earth did Haiti produce or manufacture, to sustain it’s economy. All that I could come up with was corrupt politicians. And how could all of the money pouring in be managed well. America. But I am a very ignorant woman.

But trundling back to last week or so. One of the students in The Baby’s class is the child of a BN-er ( which means a Dutch Celebrity). So, it was started and decided by this child- very early on- that the children in The Baby’s class would do chores to raise money for Haiti. I made The Baby – spoiled third child that she is- actually do miserable tasks and she was very proud of the 2 Euro that she made.

Until a few days later, when another child in her class brought in 200 Euro. And other children , who lived near the BN-er were in a newspaper.

The Baby lost that good feeling that she had, about helping people and somehow descended into some bizarre maze of competition.

Last Thursday, I received a flyer from the school ( one of a cast of thousands) , announcing that The Baby’s class would be having a *sale*, to benefit…the people of Haiti. Now, this was not to be a rummage sale, a boot sale, no, the items should have some intrinsic value. CD’s, foto frames and colored pens were suggested. Items would be sold at a minimum of 1 Euro.

Now, I still have a pile of nice photo frames, still in their wrappers, but The Baby did not even want to look at them. And while I said this to no one, I was thinking, ok, I am supposed to go out and buy something for like 10 Euro and put it up for sale for 1 Euro. This is not meshing for me.

On Sunday night, The Baby suddenly perked up and showed some interest in donating something for the * sale*. We have one cr*p load of nice things here for my parents were shopaholics , and I had my eye on a Limoges box, very pretty, but I have no emotional attachment to it.

I suggested the Limoges today at lunch ( for the deadline was today) and The Girl entered the scene. She is aware of this whole dilemma, how I feel that if The Baby doesn’t bring * something* it will just look hideous, read : peer pressure, on different levels. I mentioned to The Girl that Limoges was very fine porcelain, China, whatever. And suddenly The Girl said *no way* and rummaged about in our …our…. where we hang the coats, keep the vacuum cleaner, shoes, junk, you name it, it’s in that closet.

And she pulled out a small grayish metal elephant, about 9 inches long. Opens up like a box, it does. Now, we have about 10 of these elephants, in different sizes. We also have a duck, a rabbit or so, a few dragons, a temple dog, a teapot, trinket boxes… you get the idea. We have so many of these items in our house that we no longer see them.

I washed the elephant up with soap and told The Baby very carefully that it was made about 40 years ago, in Northern Thailand. It was made entirely by hand. Sold as silver ( and by the kilo, hence the items scattered about our home ), I thought that it was copper or brass with a silver plate ( based on the only time that I ever used silver cleaner on one of them and it came out shiny gold). The Baby’s eyes shifted to the left and then to the right and she asked to look at the photo frames.

She liked the photo frames so much, that she decided to keep them for herself, and went off to school with the elephant. We set the price at 7 Euro, for- after all- it was in the closet where we hang the coats, keep the vacuum cleaner, shoes, junk, you name it.

The children in her class loved the elephant and not because it might be made of silver, but because it was made by hand ( and no doubt about that). In fact, when The Baby came home, she wanted to bring more of our embossed Thai items to school, but I said no, one was enough.

You can catch an idea of what it looks like here, although I am quite sure that our items are not solid silver.

And so we end our adventure into Haiti, although we donate money every three months to …uh..Doctors Without Borders ? Is that the English translation ?

We are being confronted with a lot of testosterone , flinging about in the air , at Casa Kitchen. In fact, it almost reminds me of an old Ed Wood sortof film, let’s just call it *The Mist *.

Or *The Fog* , what’s the difference ?

So we bought fine TV’s for The Boy and The Girl for Christmas, and also found that one of our big butt, old TV’s worked, so that could be for The Baby. At my insistence, we bought them from a place which also provided service.

Shoot me. We have gone through 2 vacuum cleaners in as many years from the cheapo place, as well as coffee pots which die and deep fryers which go poof and stop.

360 Euro later, after a few hours of work, all excepting The Baby’s TV are hooked up and running.

Apparently, splitting a signal is more complicated for 5 TV’s than for 4.

Now, we have this satellite dish between our two roofs, and I want all of the TV’s connected to that as well. Why not, it is there ?

Remember this.

Discussing this later with The Father, he told me that he was a bit concerned, for there are porn stations available from the dish. I looked at him with heavy eyes , for neither of our girls will ever look at porn, for- in the end- porn is a *boy thing*. And as all three have computers, oh well, they can find all that they want on line, can’t they ?

Moving along, our dogs are…feeling *frisky*. You know, these two, 60 kilo male dogs. They are both guilty. Or normal, whatever, but not in the kitchen, not where The Baby and I have to watch their attempts to find love in all of the wrong places, or is it more of a matter of if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you are with ? I know, they are dogs, but when one scoots his torso over the other’s face, I do agree with The Baby and must say, that you go outside.

And then The Boyfriend tried to flex his muscles with The Girl. I don’t usually get involved with this sort of cr*p, but she was so very upset and it was obvious that he was playing games with her, and it involved her work ( she works one day a week and he had promised her a ride), which is very important to her. She was in tears and he strung her along until he could say, Oh, I’m at the gate to your home.

Mascara running down her cheeks, she left Casa Kitchen. Now, The Girl’s nickname is * my way or the highway* and The Boyfriend does not seem to be aware of the fact that Mother’s have a lot of pull with the local Alpha Male.

That day, I changed the rules in our house. Not because I dislike The Boyfriend, for I do indeed like him, but he simply comes with too much baggage for The Girl, re : his Mother and the man who has suddenly moved into his house (a very Stephen King sort of character , I tend to refer to him as Iago). My new rule was that if he wanted to see The Girl, he could come here.

It took 3 days, but he was here yesterday.

I roll my eyes up into my head, as I listen to each new episode. The Boyfriend’s Mother wants The Girl to *convert*, and become a Christian.

I have no idea when Catholics stopped being Christians. The Girl went to Catholic schools most of her life, if J.C. met The Girl, he would like her fine : she is strong, kind and compassionate. She will never walk away from a wounded bird, either of the human sort of the most common sort.

But she grows weary of being with a boy that cannot say yes when our family says, oh, let’s go to KFC ! As it brings back too many memories of how his family never did these sort of things.

She is 16 and just wants to have fun. He is a fine boy, handsome as a model, polite as polite can be, but he just has one heck of a lot of baggage.

———————

It just goes on and on. Either very early this morning or last night, Iago suggested that The Boyfriend set up a tape recorder, so that he could hear what his mother says about him when he is not around.

Which he did. He has a lot of boy toys.

All she did was bad mouth him, after he had been up for 48 hours, trying to clean up all of the soot from the fire in their kitchen last Saturday , for she forgot to unplug the deep fryer. Then poured water on it. Then opened all of the windows. The Girl, who was visiting friends in the area, saw the fire trucks and managed to get their dog out of the house, dumping it in another friend´s yard for the evening.

All that I can say is, really. I am not going to say that The Girl cannot see The Boyfriend, for it is her choice to make.

I bought ham and melon and fancy nuts today. And The Boyfriend will be here in about 20 minutes.

Fine and swell. I just do not want my little girl any where near Iago, if you know what I mean.

And I certainly know what I mean.

There are very many titillating things going on here right now, but those who confide in me ( or are they whoms?) have sworn me to secrecy.

I am finding this to be a very difficult task indeed, because the events swirling about me are fodder for a highly rated soap opera and I kid you not. Because I just listen and am not really involved in the high dramatics, me myself and I, I do find myself- so to say- sitting on the edge of my chair, waiting to hear about tomorrow’s episode.

In the meantime, I take The Baby to ice skate. At 10 years old, she has skated exactly 7 times. She loves it. My next mission- should I decide to accept it- is to find an indoor rink where she can skate all of the time, not just when Mother Nature decides to freeze our..patooties off.

A sport would be good for her, as well as the chance to meet children who do not go to her school ( isn’t that record just being worn out ?) Both The Boy and The Girl found wonderful friends via their * sports*.

But I must admit, my weakest side is my love of gossiping. I don’t care for ice cream, I eat a chocolate about once a month, but chivalry is not dead in my soul.

To end my suffering I shall relate that Miep Giess died this week. I was fascinated by Miep and her husband Jan, for they were instrumental in the famous hiding place of Anne Frank and her family. The diary was found by Miep after the raid, and preserved, unread, until Otto Frank returned. Otto Frank lived for a number of years with the couple after the war.

I could gone on and on about her- her book is one of my favorites- but the link above tells it much better…

Elvis is our Newf. Newfs are great dogs, one ends up with a 150 pound doormat.

It works. Try opening a door with 150 pounds behind it.

However, since his half brother, Buddy, died, Elvis has become the uber Alpha male. Odd to think that Elvis could change so very much- I once did a Google search ( yes, I love Google, although time is making our relationship a bit …thin) to see if dogs could suffer ( ?) from ADHD.

They can. Gives you an idea of what a…twit Elvis used to be.

About 1 year and a half ago, The Baby and I were walking Elvis and were attacked by some Shepperd mix. The Alpha Male in Elvis came forth. Such a noise, such foam ! You know, the last dog in the world that you want to attack, if you have half a brain, is a Newf : you simply cannot hurt these dogs. I suppose that is why Newfs have been breed to have such gentle characters.

But Elvis suddenly became this rip – roaring, make my day, don’t touch our baby… wolf.

Once The Baby, I and Elvis were home , I checked Elvis, for it really was a dog fight, you know, put your coins on the table. His mouth was dripping blood.

A careful examination told me that Elvis was fine, the blood was not his.

Last Sunday, The Father and The Boy took the dogs for a walk. Why, The Father even brought my terminal camera with him, hoping to take photos of their walk to one of the islands which make up the fortifications of our town.

No photos taken, for somehow, they lost Elvis. There is indeed a leash law here, and because our dogs are so very big, they rarely go off of their leashes. But the boys looked high and low, saw no dogs, no people, and the music of * Born Free*played in the background.

But they lost Elvis.

The Boy found Elvis.

I suppose that Elvis was really fed up with those two yappers , for I know that I am. The owners of yappers always say, oh, they are frightened ! But that really doesn’t work in my dog dictionary. If our two, 150 pound dogs were basically hanging from their leashes, toes not touching the ground in a frenzy of barking and foaming, I would see this as aggressive behavior. Oh well, a little dog can shit on your stoop and get away with that as well.

So The Boy found Elvis. Elvis was on his way home when he ran into the yappers, who were frightened, of course.

Elvis bit one. Totally unforgivable. Then again, Elvis could have killed the beast. I suppose that Elvis chose not to.

To get Elvis off of the yapper, The Boy had to use a wrestling move : he wrapped his arms and legs around Elvis and pulled him off. Unfortunately, they were on a dike and fell off of it, snow and all. That is about a 20 meter fall. So much for the finger in a dike.

Elvis was not moving at all yesterday, The Boy wrenched his neck and bonked his head against a rock when they rolled down the dike.

And we received a bill for 100 euro , Vet fees, for the yapper.

I spent hours and hours ( I kid you not) looking up goulash recipes the past few days.

In the end, I sortof smished- smashed the stuff together, using things that I know we like. After all, we are not Hungarian, why, excepting moi, none of us has ever even been to Hungary….

It smelled so good, really, buckle your knees good. BUT, when I went to add salt- you know, big, whatever they call *good* salt, whoops. It just dumped in. I tried to scoop the chunks of salt out, but the Gods were against me.

Google told me that adding potatoes was an old wives’s tale. I ignored Google, for I knew that I could add water and the spuds would thicken everything up. And sortof spread out that salt.

My only other option was trying to figure out how I had smish- smashed things together, making the whole thing again – obviously without salt- and mixing the two together.

Uh.

Well, I know that there is far too much salt, but I could be a good poker player : will anyone else notice it ? To tell the truth, at first I thought that it was simply too *hot*.

The Children all seemed to enjoy telling me this morning that the weather people are predicting a large dump of snow this weekend.

I’m not proud. Right now, I loathe sticking any part of my body outside of our house, and there are a few rooms in our house ( our big bathroom and our bedroom, which have no heat) which find me muttering like a sailor, under my breath, as I pass through the door. In fact, I curse so roundly that I can almost imagine the ghost of my dear, departed mother following me with a bar of soap.

In the newspapers, they actually recommend that couples sleep in the raw- if you know what I mean- because nothing is warmer than …flesh upon flesh.

Yesterday, at the grocery store, I was chatting with one of *the girls* ( I really have to stop thinking of them as *girls*, for they must both be pushing 40..) and said, oh well, I guess that I have lived in The Netherlands long enough that I have learned to complain about the weather. An elderly woman came up behind me and started laughing, saying that indeed, the dutch always complain about the weather, or, in a pinch, always talk about the weather.

Tonight at dinner we all agreed that the best part of this bitter road is the food. Gone the blanched vegetables, the salads, we want.. grease. Fats. Meat.

The Father announced that he wanted a goulash once again ( uh…). The Baby wants me to make pancakes ( more like crepes than american pancakes) with apples once more.

Yes, yes, Winter Food.

I suppose that most people associate Van Gogh with the South of France. Well, he grew up here in Brabant, not very far away at all from Casa Kitchen. That painting, The Potato Eaters ( is that the correct translation ? ), is smack dab correct : how they love their potatoes here, all mushed up like baby food with some member of the cabbage family mushed together with the spuds ( I myself am also fond of the kale and potato mush..). Winter food.

As well as the family scarfing them down, I am rather fond of making these uber Brabant…or Dutch.. dishes. Not anything that one would ever find in a restaurant, but in a way a bit of folk history.

A while ago, I changed the meat that I use for making soups and Dutch dishes. Apparently, I was using a cut of beef from the shoulder ( ugh, brings back memories of dissection in Biology). Now, I am very fond of stringy beef that has to cook for 3 years, I like pot roast, I kid you not. So the shoulder cut was fine for me.

And then one day, at our very fine butcher shop ( he still makes his own pate, smokes his own salmon, makes his own lunch meats, uses only free range pigs… you get the idea..) I saw a different cut of meat which cost the same as the meat I always bought for soup and sundries. It just looked interesting, that * dikke lende* did. I now think that in English it is called heart of rump, but my, what a tasty meat. What a fine structure. ( Brown for flavor, brown for flavor…)

Today in the local newspaper I found a recipe that I simply have to try. Yes, I have tried recipes from the local paper and many have found their way into our favorites. But this sounds so very Dutch that we must indeed try it.

It includes meat that must cook for a cooties age, carrots, leek, thyme, laurel, and a large dollop of apple syrup (?). But what makes it so very Dutch is that once everything has been browned or sautéed, simmering away one spreads 1 or 2 tablespoons of mustard on two thin slices of gingerbread ( ok, Dutch gingerbread is not as overwhelming as the gingerbread in The States..) and places that on top of everything.

Somehow I know that this whole gingerbread business is a very old Dutch way to thicken soups. Stews. And I am very curious to try this.

Winter Food.

Always look at the bright side of life…

de dumm….